Argumentos

We stand today before the gates of one of our temples of finance. It is a temple where greed and profit are the highest good, where self-worth is determined by the ability to amass wealth and power at the expense of others, where laws are manipulated, rewritten and broken, where the endless treadmill of consumption defines human progress, where fraud and crimes are the tools of business. The two most destructive forces of human nature—greed and envy—drive the financiers, the bankers, the corporate mandarins and the leaders of our two major political parties, all of whom profit from ...

The consensus is that US policymakers erred when:· the decision was made to eschew principles-based regulation and allow the shadow banking sector to grow with respect to its leverage and its compensation schemes, in the belief that the government’s guarantee of the commercial banking system was enough to keep us out of trouble; · the Fed and the Treasury decided, once we were in trouble, to nationalize AIG and pay its bills rather than to support its counterparties, which allowed financiers to pretend that their strategies were fundamentally sound; · the ...

If 2008 was a tough year for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, 2009 is looking no easier as political battles pile on top of tough economic challenges.With the end of his term looming in January, Bernanke's skill in avoiding pitfalls on both fronts will influence whether he wins another four years at the helm of the Fed.First, there's the economy: with the U.S. unemployment rate at 9.4 percent and rising, Bernanke faces the challenge of fostering a recovery from an 18-month-old recession with unconventional policies that some worry will ignite inflation.Then, there's politics: he must ...